February 28, 2011 - Health Canada released Friday a new set of bigger and more graphic health warnings for cigarette packages that will require tobacco companies to overhaul both the inside and outside of packs.

Twelve new images to cover 75 percent of the outside panel of cigarette packages were unveiled alongside eight new health messages to appear on the inside in full colour — setting Canada apart from other countries.

"Canada is the only country in the world that actually takes over the inside of the package as well as the outside," Cynthia Callard, executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, said Friday. "This is really innovative."Tobacco companies will also have to include four toxic emission messages for the side panel, along with a national toll-free quit line.

The draft regulations provide that the new warnings would be required on packages at the manufacturer and distributor levels by the end of the year and at the retail level in March 2012.

The new packaging rules will not apply to untaxed cigarettes sold on some aboriginal reserves.Robbie Dickson, CEO of the Rainbow Tobacco Company, a Mohawk enterprise based on the Kahnawake reserve in Quebec, told a convention of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations this week that his company is responsible for 25 percent of cigarette sales in Ontario. (Mohawk cigarette maker urges Sask. bands to pass own tobacco laws by Jeremy Warren, Postmedia News, 2/17/2011)